by Betrayer? I barely knew ‘er! AHAHAHAHA… ha.
Lepcis has this great response any time I complain about a game but stop and ask, “Am I just biased?” To which he responds “No, you just know what you like.” That singular statement is a great way to understand that even though your preferences are swayed by your own personal interests, they’re still a valid method of evaluating something, as long as you’re aware of that and admit it. Thus, I am an extremely mechanics-driven player; I play to consume rules, tricks, puzzles, strategies, nuances (even bugs at times), stats and techniques. So–even while Betrayer presents itself *very* uniquely… it’s a horrible game mechanically, and because of this I cannot rate it higher than Tier 3.
Truly, Betrayer has some really cool things going for it, both in mood and visuals. For starters, it’s all black and white, with red being used to show when something is important. Next, it has this weird 1492, Spanish/Indian (Native American)/Pilgrim thing going on, in a world where your tools for combat are muskets, flintlock pistols and tomahawks. In fact, I was feeling very excited about the whole thing in a Tier 1 fashion, much as Lepcis had to say here.
The problem is the flow of gameplay. While the setting and visuals may be unique, the gameplay is a tired copy of the Far Cry series (which itself was a copy and has been copied a dozen times over as well), probably most similarly to Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon. You wander around with your set of 3 weapons, a couple throwables and handful of medpacks and run into random enemies while tagging points of interest (POIs) to obtain collectibles, loot and notes that expand on the world. The system is an ouroboros; you gather gear to take points on the map to gather gear to take points on the map. This is (generally) amusing in the Far Cry series because the action is quick, usually involves explosives (and in the case of Blood Dragon… laser… breathing… T-Rexes…) and has a fun “pick up and play” balance. The enemies are never too hard, nor are they too easy; you’re never really in any danger of actually dying, but you do need to try a little. That’s what makes it fun (although not wholesome). The problem with Betrayer is that it does this exactly… except that last bit. No, in Betrayer, you either have to meticulously inch through each map to actually get anywhere and in no way is it rewarding… or die a lot. And there’s no in-game cost for dying–just the soul-crushing real-world cost of your time as you trudge back to where you last left off for the 10th time.
Your weapons in Betrayer are underpowered (I support this) in line with the era you’re in. This means that you’ll need to strike hard and true (in the head) if you want to drop anything. Okay, fair, I like this–but you’re constantly pitted against upwards of 4 to 6 foes at a time, so chances of you getting an easy snipe and getting to go along your way are scarce. Okay, okay, so we go guerrilla, right? We take a shot, drop one enemy, and crouch or take partial cover! …except the enemies have “aim bot” turned on, so if any part of you is visible to them, they *will* hit you, no matter how much sprinting or serpentine you are committing to. Okay, so… we take full cover! And we reload! Yes, this is how the Colonials did it, right? …except the enemies immediately know exactly where you are the *moment* you fire anything louder than a bow, and the AI is actually smart (congratulations to the dev I guess) whereupon they charge at your position, going around your cover and flanking you to death. Remember, you are working with gunpowder and musket balls, so you’ll be lucky if you’ve finished reloading by the time they get to you, let along have enough firepower and ability to get immediate clean headshots on the other 3 to 5 enemies coming after you. At this point you could try to run except as said before, they have aimbot turned on so…
Okay, so we go full-on caution mode, right? Sneak up on an enemy. Crouch. Wait for the perfect shot. Take the shot. Okay, either he’s still alive with 1/10th of his HP, or his buddies heard us–either way, we high tail it out of there. We’ll reload as we run, then turn around and take another shot. We can do this; full-on kite-mode. Oh… except while you’re doing that (you know… running backwards) you run into a handful of other enemies, who immediately gun you you down with perfect accuracy, and you have to respawn. Again. This ultimately is the problem with Betrayer. You *have* to play this game exactly one way–you have to constantly creep around. You have to eliminate EVERYTHING, so that when you’re backpeddling through this area later, you don’t get sandwiched between enemies. (And don’t get me started on the Indians–not worth it enough to let them live, not worth it enough to kill them; they are truly the masters of death by 1,000 paper-cuts guerrilla tactics.) This means that you must meticulously weed your way through a location, kill off everything you can get your hands on without being seen by the “pack,” then immediately abuse the fast-travel option to go back and heal. Kill, fast travel back to the base, heal, fast travel back to your last location, continue. Kill, fast travel back to base… The same goes for when you run into a horde–the enemies don’t lose sight of you, they just follow you indefinitely; so you’ll have to lead them to a water barrel (health) and run circles around it while you whittle them down, dunking your head in the water after each one so that you can survive more than 2 shots. It’s not fun, it’s just tedious and time-wasting.
I guess there’s some kind of plot or something about dead people and spirits, and a light-world and shadow-world, but the mechanics seemed so bland repetitive that I can’t be bothered to play. It’s not *hard* to kill anything in the game–just time consuming. If I want a grind, I’ll play a JRPG–at least then I’ll have an overly-complicated number of skills and customization options available to me. In this though? Why would I bother?
